West of Wall Street

Common is the belief among Easterners that all Big Business news originates in the East. Proud Californians have long disagreed, pointing for proof to California's many flourishing industries. Last week Californians were given fresh proof of their importance. Dow, Jones & Co., financial news-distributors, publishers of the Wall Street Journal, announced that starting in October a Pacific Coast morning edition of the Journal would be published daily, ''in further recognition of the important financial growth of this territory." With head offices in San Francisco, the new Journal will be distributed to the chief Pacific Coast cities by airplane. Reports of Eastern business operations, stock transactions, mergers will, of course, be complete and detailed. But at least one-third of the news will concern itself wholly with things Pacific. Kenneth C. Hogate. vice president and general manager of Dow, Jones & Co., amplified upon the necessity for such a newspaper. "The west coast," said he, "is an empire within itself. It contains the only entirely separate markets in the United States. Prices on the Los Angeles and San Francisco Stock Exchanges-- whose seats are now selling for approximately $150,000 each--are in no way dependent on New York Stock Exchange prices. Some stocks such as Standard Oil of California, Roister Radio, Pacific Gas & Electric, California Packing [Del Monte Brand products] are listed on both Pacific Coast and New York boards, and the prices sometimes vary east and west. Financial news printed in Eastern business newspapers reaches California too stale to be news. And Westerners certainly deserve fresh financial news. So with these things considered, we thought it would be best to inaugurate a separate Pacific Coast edition." Western brokers viewed the plan with approval. Well known to them is the man selected to be the Journal's editor--H. C. Hendee, head of Dow, Jones's Pacific Coast financial ticker news service, once a newspaper reporter on the Detroit News with Mr. Hogate. The establishment of the Journal seemed a natural out- growth of the establishment last year of Dow, Jones's coast-to-coast direct wire, serving Pacific Coast brokerage houses with last-minute eastern news. Pacific Coast brokers will have in the new Journal the only Western financial newspaper that is in no sense local.